IDG Connect’s 20 Red-Hot, Pre-IPO Companies to Watch in 2019

IDG Connect’s 20 Red-Hot, Pre-IPO Companies to Watch in 2019

by Susan Katz

February 12, 2019

SalesHood made the IDG list of red-hot, pre-IPO companies to watch in 2019

SalesHood
Interview: CEO Elay Cohen

Founded: 2013

An interesting and welcome trend on this year’s pre-IPO chart is, relatively speaking at least, the shortage of massively funded companies where the marketers appear to have trumped the engineers and fast-talking CEOs have spun their stories to the point that well-heeled VCs throw lumps of money at them.

Even with its CEO and co-founder Elay Cohen having been at Salesforce.com, the nesting ground for many a modern startup, SalesHood has managed to maintain a homely feel. Cohen previously had a senior job in sales enablement at Salesforce, helping to on-board sales executives at a time when they were arriving in swarms to cope with demand for its cloud CRM services. Those hard yards were put into action with SalesHood where Cohen & co. automated what was previously a chewing-gum-and-string, ad hoc set of processes.

And, in classic American Dream style, among his first partners was his alma mater and now San Francisco neighbour, Salesforce. Today, a tranche of other tech brands including Sage, DocuSign, Yext and Alteryx are SalesHood customers, intent on accelerating deal closing, increasing deal size and wallet share and keeping rep churn to a minimum.

SalesHood did raise Series A funding in 2017 but, staying in character, declined to say how much. Instead it trumpeted recruiting some reassuring names to help nurture its progress, including Arjun Gupta and Lindsey Armstrong. This company has the markings of a solid and substantial firm that will be the power behind the sales engine of better-known names in years to come.